Dr Nokuthula Mchunu is the Deputy Director at the African Open Science Platform hosted by the National Research Foundation, South Africa. Dr Mchunu has a wealth of experience in academia outreach programmes, the popularisation of science, and STEM with local communities. She was senior Researcher from the Agricultural Research Council of South Africa in the Biotechnology Platform. She completed her doctoral degree in fungal genomics, was previously a senior scholar in the Department of Biotechnology of Durban University of Technology for more than 15 years. She has also served as a scientist in a number of international institutions including the University of Cincinnati (USA), Lund University (Sweden), Tianjin University, (China) and the Centre for Chemical Biology (Malaysia). She is the first recipient of the Young Scientist Programme between China and South Africa. Her research focused on Covid and pathogen surveillance in wastewater, fungal genetics, Cannabis and Africa legume genomics.